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Thank you.

Cool.

The vocals didn't come in.

It's cut, though.

Very interesting.

I said,

just like I did 22 years ago.

People either hate Meatloaf and Bat Out of Hell or absolutely just worship it.

It was an unusual image for a lot of people to see this Pavarottian guy.

He was always an incredibly fearsome, majestic, thrilling character, but also

pretty funny at the same time.

How do you describe your style of music?

Let Jimmy describe our style of music.

How do I describe my style of music? Good, Jimmy. Get right in there. Jump on

in, Jimmy.

I describe it as feverish, strong, romantic, violent,

rebellious, fun, and heroic.

This was the days of disco.

This was Saturday Night Fever. I mean, this is the iconic image across the

world with John Travolta in his white suit pointing to the heavens. We had a

huge, huge fat meatloaf, you know, about to collapse into the heavens. I think

there's a lot of the rock audience that really responded to that, male and

female. because it wasn't just another skinny little rock star with that

fabulous hairdo you know this is a guy who's totally wearing his heart on his

sleeve and his sweat and everything else and he just went out there and did it

150 percent

These were mini plays, mini operas if you will, where there was a beginning, a

middle, and an end like most songs, but these were on such a large scale that

they sort of made you feel like you were watching a show when you were listening

to them. My favorite records were like that. My favorite things were like The

Doors, and I loved the White Album, Beatles, and those were like entering

kingdoms, self-enclosed worlds.

And I didn't want it to just be a bunch of songs. I wanted to feel like you were

entering a cinematic or a complete theatrical environment.

This was the remaining fragments of some musicals that Steinman had been

writing for the public theater.

Steinman was coming out of a whole Broadway milieu and thinking in terms of

show. You know, this is all about show.

I was totally thinking of theater, and I did theater up at school.

I did a big, but it was a big piece of rock theater. It was a three-hour epic

rock musical that I wrote, a piece called The Dream Mansion.

And when I did that, it was seen by a guy named Joseph Papp, who ran the New

York Shakespeare Festival.

And he was blown away by it and thrilled. And he actually, in one of

those classic show business stories, signed it up during intermission, came

upstairs to the dressing rooms and signed a contract to do it at the New

York Shakespeare Festival.

So I stayed on to work with him. And the first production he asked me to do was a

show called More Than You Deserve.

And we were auditioning actors, and we auditioned maybe 800 actors. He came in,

this 350-pound behemoth, walked in, named Meat Love, which for some reason

didn't strike me at all weird. I remember everyone was very freaked out

about calling him Meat, when it seemed totally natural to me, so there's

something about that, I suppose.

People had said to me, you can sing, and I had worked on vibrato and worked on

different techniques of singing, not going to a coach or anything, just on my

own. And people have always said you could sing, but it wasn't until I sang

the Jim Steinman thing, More Than You Deserve, that things was completely

different, because that song stopped the show.

There's only 250 people, but they all just stood up and cheered wildly, and he

was in tears. It was one of the most thrilling things I've ever seen.

And you could tell not only was he an astonishing singer, but also pretty much

a great actor, in raw form, but a truly great actor.

He responded totally to the kind of music I was writing.

I don't think he had heard music like that, but he responded to it. Whereas a

lot of people didn't get it, he got it immediately.

And that's when I started writing songs for him.

and thought, eh, it'd be fun to make an album. I had no idea what that entailed.

I had no interest, actually, in making records.

But just thought, well, why not?

And so we started doing that while on the road.

I started thinking, I'll write for this guy.

I first met Meat December 1975.

I was in to do a show on Broadway, a rock and roll version of Hamlet, called

Rocket by Hamlet, and I was playing Horatio.

And Meat was playing the priest, and he said, you have to meet Jim.

I said, who's Jim? He said, Steinman. He's my writer. We're going to do a

record. He's written all these songs, and I think you should meet him. So the

next day, we were at Radio City Music Hall rehearsing. Jim comes, and we go in

this room with a piano, and they proceed to play me all of the songs from Batten

Out of Hell with just piano voice, and I was stunned.

Jim would always come up with these great titles.

And then he would try to write a song that would justify the greatness of the

title. And then Meatloaf would be cast in the role of the behemoth.

And shortly after that, we met Ellen Foley.

And then it began to take on this real theatrical Beauty and the Beast kind of

vibe. The songs had been.

written already.

I think, you know, they, some of them had been around for a while because

Mietje Steinman came from, you know, as we all did, from a theatrical tradition

background, and some of the songs had been in plays he had written previously.

We had no record deal, and we had no idea whether this would work or not. I

don't even think we knew what this was.

I mean, I'm sure Meat did it. I wasn't too sure. I thought I was doing

basically something very theatrical.

I wasn't thinking in terms of rock and roll or commercial records.

Meat was thinking in terms of commercial records. I'm not sure he thought this

was the right direction, but he had a lot of faith in the music.

Oh, we knew we were going to make a record. I don't remember when that was.

I mean, that's what we were doing. That's why I wasn't going to do any more

theater. We were going to make a record.

And so we thought we had enough material. So then that's when we started

making rounds with the record companies. And that was a true disaster. That was

like about a year of the most, like a medley of the most brutal rejections you

can imagine.

In 74 and 75, I think we were rejected by 5,000 record companies. They actually

opened up some record companies for the sole purpose of rejecting us.

You know, we really didn't get anywhere.

We didn't do tapes, because there was no way to capture this on a demo tape. We

did a couple, but it never captured them.

And so we'd do it live, and people would just look at us like... What are you

doing? Besides getting a record company, producers just hated it.

We would go to producers and they'd say, it's impossible. You can't do this on a

record. It's theater music, so no one's going to want to buy it. And it's also,

you can't get it across on record. It depends on seeing this huge guy in front

of you. You're pounding the piano. It's all visual. We can't get that on record.

And the only person who believed in it was Todd Rundgren.

who's either he believed in it or he just didn't care. Either way, he's a

genius. He listened to it and he said, okay, let's go, let's do it. But I've

been doing so many concept albums of my own and did work on records that had a

level of challenge to them. So it just seemed like that it would at least be a

productive working relationship.

And the commercial potential of the record was completely unknown when we

started.

This is pretty much what it sounded like to me the first time I heard it.

Of course without all these background vocals.

A little rolling on the river business here.

I got an iCats background vocal part.

I don't know if any other producer would have understood it, because I don't

think they did.

That's why we wanted Todd, because when Todd comes in, he goes, oh, I understand

this. He didn't question it at all.

Every other producer we ever played for questioned it and said, well, what is

that, and what is that? Todd just looked at me, oh, yeah, I get that.

I understand.

Okay, yeah, I can do that.

So it went from piano and voices, myself, Meafloaf, and Rory

Dodd, to, you know, this incredible multi-layered, multi-leveled production

that it became.

We used to do all this counterpoint on... Gonna go all the way tonight.

Gonna go all the way.

Gonna go all the way tonight. Gonna go, gonna go, gonna go, gonna go, gonna go,

gonna go. Real music, Broadway music.

Gonna go all the way. Oh, yeah, gonna go all the way tonight.

Gonna go, gonna go, gonna go. I mean, it went on forever.

This is crazy. And Todd went... What are you doing that for? I don't remember how

it went, but I know Todd was going, look, just go, gonna go all the way

tonight, we're gonna go all the way in tonight's tonight. Do it four times,

let's go.

Because we were barely 17 and we were barely... We're gonna go all the way

tonight, we're gonna go all the way in tonight's tonight.

We're gonna go all the way tonight... The best thing about Todd is he's,

besides being the only true genius I've met, he also is incredibly sarcastic.

And what I love is he never once said anything complimentary about anything we

did. Because I remember us sort of bitching and moaning at him, you know,

oh, it's supposed to be like, it's supposed to be like, you know, Romeo and

Juliet. It's like West Store, Side Store. And he's like, mm-hmm. You know,

and he made it into a rock and roll record.

I was nothing but a lonely boy looking for something new.

And you were nothing but a lonely girl, but you were something, something like a

dream come true.

I was a boss of the tackle and a head of the block. When I played my guitar, I

made the canyon drop.

But every Saturday night, I felt the fever grow.

Didn't know what it's like.

Todd basically subsidized the record himself.

It was on Bearsville Records, which was a label Todd was on, part of Warner

Brothers. But it didn't go through any official channels. Todd just says, well,

I'll just make the record. I know I can make it not too expensively. And let's

just do it. We'll do it in my studio. So he essentially paid for it. Now, this

was fine until the record was actually completed and done, you know, a final

record. And it was submitted to Warner Brothers, which was the parent company.

of barrisville and to our astonishment they rejected it and then we had this

record in the can for the better part of i guess almost a year and i would take

it around from record company to record company get a little glimmer of hope

somebody would like the guitar riff to something somebody else would think

something else was cool but by the time the conventional wisdom of these

corporations got together they found plenty of reasons to say no i don't know

i tell you it was endless suits you know that we paraded in round four that

didn't get it, until this guy, Steve Popovich, heard it.

Steve Popovich, who had been sort of legendary A&R guy at Columbia. They gave

him his own label, the Cleveland International Records.

He was from Cleveland, Ohio, and he was a great music guy and a great rock and

roll fan.

And we sent him the tape, and he listened to the first 20 seconds of it.

He took the words right out of my mouth.

Apparently called, David Sonnenberg said, I want to sign this. It's the best

rock and roll intro I've ever heard. I want to sign it.

And so on the basis of those 20 seconds, which had no singing at all, we got

signed to Cleveland International Records.

And that's how we finally got on the label.

Basically was it.

So it's pretty simple. It was based on your basic.

It's going back to the who and everything else your basic power chords

and all I added was a little With a little melody but

It

was a hot summer night and a beach was burning there was fog crawling over the

sand

When I listen to your heart I hear the whole world turning I see the shooting

stars falling through your trembling hands Jim Steinman was highly

influenced by Bruce Springsteen and the influence to me was obvious from the

very outset because of the theatrical nature of the material and

because of the kind of suburban lyric, the

disenfranchised, rural suburban teenage angst kind of thing.

That was... Every Bruce Springsteen song was about that.

Well, I'd read stories about how Jim wanted to get myself and Roy Benton

involved in the recording of this record to sort of latch on to what Bruce

Springsteen was doing at the time. But I don't believe that's true. I don't think

that was ever in his mind for a second.

it harkens back to phil spector you know whereas bruce is sort of from that phil

spector school you know and bruce's records the earlier records sound a lot

like phil spector songs and that's what jim wanted too jim wanted that that you

know larger than life wall of sound we're going for the arch phil spector

effect here which in the beginning is not so uh

It's got a little bit of that thick texture, but the real signature part is

when the when the drums come in with this beat here

This is how you know it's

live you can actually hear piano in the drums and then most Most of the times

your drums in the piano Let's find out

You can hear a little bit of drums in the piano too.

And then you layer in all of this.

Chimes and the tambourine.

And you're in specter land.

I'm trying to speak, but no matter what I do I just can't seem to make any

sound And then you took the words right out of my

mouth Oh, it must have been while you were kissing me You took the words

right out of my mouth It's fair enough to say it meets like a method actor as a

singer. He can't just sing a song. I mean, it's not like he needs an hour.

to become the character.

But he definitely sings every song as a character.

He doesn't sing as just Meat Loaf.

I'm not even sure he knows who Meat Loaf is.

I mean, he definitely would become the person in the song.

And he wouldn't be able to shake it off too easily afterward either. That

character that's on stage, I mean, people that know me that haven't ever

seen me perform and then all of a sudden see me perform, they like freak them

out. They go, man, are you different on stage? I go, well...

No, that's just, that's who goes to sing those songs.

That's the intensity.

And it's really not a different person, it's a different intensity.

Another new band, this time Meatloaf, whose first album has just been

released. It was produced by Todd Rundgren, and here's the title track.

It's called Pat Out Of Hell.

Sirens are screaming and the fires are howling way down in the valley tonight.

There's a man in the shadows with a gun in his eye and a blade shining oh so

bright.

There's evil in the air and there's thunder in the sky and a killer's on the

bloodshot streets.

Oh, I'm down in the tunnel with a deadly horizon. Oh, I swear I saw a young boy

down in the gutter. He was starting to foam in the heat.

That came out of my obsession with car crash songs.

I grew up loving car crash songs as a kid. And one of the first singles I

think I ever bought was Tell Laura I Love Her, which is about a car crash.

There's a whole body of songs about car crashes that I just love because the

mellow Leader of the Pack was one of the greatest. That was a motorcycle one.

And there's something so thrilling to me about that kind of operatic narrative

that involves a cataclysmic event, especially one that's so perfectly in

tune with a teenager's world in rock and roll as a car or a motorcycle crash.

So I know that I sat down to write the most extreme crash song of all time.

Most of these guitar licks that are in here like filling in between all the

vocal passages just kind of like made them up as I went

along.

But I've heard probably half a dozen guitar players since then play literally

these notes because that's the way they wanted it to be. That's the way Steinman

and me wanted it to be. Every subsequent guitar player that came after me to play

exactly what was played on the record. So I've heard, I've seen tall ones and

short ones all playing exactly the same place.

Now here's the...

The famous motorcycle guitar.

I was obsessed, of course, not only with having a motorcycle crash, but having

motorcycle in the song.

And I kept saying to Todd, well, where's the motorcycle?

Kind of whining, I'm sure, getting on his nerves when it's flattening. Where's

the motorcycle?

And finally, like his last overt obsession, I realized there was no

motorcycle. I said, Todd, you promised me you'd have a motorcycle.

And he said... oh god you really want a motorcycle on top of everything else i

said yeah can't we have a motorcycle you know and it should be sound effects

right he said no i don't have any sound effects i'll just do it with my guitar

this is where todd back it up just a little bit this is where todd in his one

take on the lead guitar track stopped it and said oh you want motorcycle huh okay

watch this and he did a few knobs now we'll just i want to solo this and just

listen to him do the motorcycle and come out okay go ahead

It's guitar.

Never stops, watch.

It's gonna come right on to a solo.

Never stopped it.

But you're standing here watching Todd do this, mouth open, going,

unbelievable.

I can see myself.

And the funny thing is that Meat Loaf and everyone involved didn't want me to

finish the song. I got up to the end of the second chorus before there was ever

a crash, and they said it was finished. They said, for Christ's sake, it's six

minutes. Stop.

And they were really angry. They said, I can't stop. There's a whole section

missing. I've got to do the crash.

They didn't know what I was talking about, but I had to do that motorcycle

crash.

And I don't think there's ever been a more violent crash. I mean, this is a

crash where a guy basically has his body opened up and his heart explodes out

like a bat out of hell flying away.

It all started with me basically wanting to just take, you know, one of the

obsessions from my teen years, car crash songs, to the ultimate extreme, to where

they'd be so operatic you couldn't possibly... I still don't think it's

possible to write a more extreme crash song now that that one's been written.

Walked on and twisted at the foot of a burning bike And I think

somebody somewhere must be told

Three high C's.

I never heard that before. I don't think that's there.

No. Where is it coming from?

Well, that's on the lead vocal track.

I don't think anybody's... That's an unheard thing.

You know why it's not there? Because it sucks.

Okay.

When the record came out, it was so sort of under-promoted.

It may have gotten a reputation in some ways as damaged goods because it had

been walked around so many places that from an industry standpoint, the

expectations were next to nothing.

for the success of the record, and I don't think it got a lot of critical

notice. I said when we were Bad Outta Hell, and we were struggling on Bad

Outta Hell when it first came out, and I remember giving this little speech, and

I turned to Jim, and I turned to the band, and I said, okay, this is it,

guys. I'm telling you right now what's gonna happen.

I'm a train, and you can either choose to be a car behind me, or you can unhook

yourself right now, because I'm going.

And that was the image I have, and you know what?

That's the image that in my mind is exactly what happened. I stoked this

train so full of wooden coal that it burned so hot.

And we succeeded, but it killed me. I mean, it really, it did me in.

During the touring, he worked to the point of collapse, literally, every

night. It was so hard to make this record work, so the touring was

incessant. I mean, the kind of performance he gives, you really can't

give every night. There was sometimes like six shows a week.

And he really is like an opera singer. He should be doing two a week. I mean,

it was so extreme.

He was so drained. So it really took a huge toll on him, vocally and

physically. You have to remember in 1977, it was the dawning of punk.

Well, maybe punk had been around for a couple of years by then, but it really

had come into its own at that point, the Sex Pistols and the Clash and all that

stuff.

There was the disco emergence, you know, the Hustle

and Rock the Boat and all that dance music was just coming out.

If there's a market out there for 10-minute Wagnerian explosive anthems

sung by a 350-pound guy with a huge voice, then we got that market cornered.

And that was sort of the case once they heard it. It was a big struggle to get

it heard. No one wanted to play it. In fact, it was a much bigger success

overseas long before America.

The record was first successful in Australia and England and much later in

America. It took about a year in America. It happened very fast in

England and Australia.

It was around three months ago that we had their Bat Out of Hell film on the

programme, and it's true to say that it brought in more response than almost

anything else during the whole series so far.

The LP came out here at the beginning of the year. It was produced by Todd

Rundgren, and tonight gives us a second opportunity to have a good look at the

band that's had such an impact during the first few months of 1978, Meatloaf

and Paradise by The Dashboard Light.

Little thing as if it happened only yesterday.

Parking by the lake and there was not another car in sight.

Then I never had a girl looking any better than you did.

And all the kids at school, they were wishing they were me that night.

And now our bodies are so close and tight.

It never felt so good, it never felt so right.

And the live shows really did sell it. I mean it was I don't know if they do that

anymore, where they really go out there and just do a tour and dig in, you know,

from the very beginning and just with this huge monolithic group of people.

Not with that, you know, we didn't have any props or anything like that other

than ourselves.

You know, we were the drama.

It was a great time.

For us, I mean, the record was killer. I mean, it was just selling all over the

place. We went to Australia and we knocked the Bee Gees out of number one

with Saturday Night Fever with Battle to Hell.

I mean, that's how big he was down there and all over the world. It was wild.

There is a basic law of music, which is if you're willing to go out and

flog what you do endlessly, you will almost always build an audience.

If you go back to the same towns over and over and over and over again, your

audience usually...

If you've got anything of interest, we'll usually expand.

It all depends what accountant you speak to to figure out how many copies this

has sold. The best we can tell is around 34 million, or possibly 3 or 4 million

higher, but somewhere in the mid-30 million area.

And all I can do is keep on telling you I want

you. I want you. I need you. I need you.

I know Two Out of Three Ain't

Bad

was the last song written.

It was written after we had started recording the record.

I know it was an 11th hour tune.

And, you know, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't...

i don't think it was what we considered to be the centerpiece of the album

turned out to be you know the only real big hit single we had off the record it

was just um you know i want you i need you

but there ain't no way i'm ever gonna love you

now don't be sad cause two out of three

ain't bad

Now don't be sad.

Because two out of three ain't bad.

And to me, it was very country, by the way. I mean, I wanted to be a country

singer when I was a kid, too. I loved country. So I really heard it like the

plains of Texas.

I want you.

I need you.

But there ain't no way I'm ever going to love you. I mean, I just heard it like a

dusty plain.

And it was perfect to transfer it to Meatloaf, who always had that in him,

anyway, that Elvis quality.

I mean, I think there's a bit of Elvis, to say the least, in Meat.

And that's all it was. It became more elaborate, but it was...

Very simple, just two out of three ain't bad.

I mean, actually, it could almost be an Eagles song, but luckily it wasn't.

I poured it on and I poured it out.

Somebody suggested we make it sound like an Eagles song, because Eagles are

enjoying a string of hit singles, and you kind of hear that Eagles influence

here.

Well, it did sound like the Eagles, didn't it?

I think one of the things that kind of saves this song from being terribly

sappy is the underlying humor in the lyrics.

You know, Simon just can't help himself sometimes.

He has to throw a little joke in there or a pun of some kind.

That's an unusual lyric there, crackerjack box.

How do you get away with that?

Only in a meatloaf song.

I always wondered, too, by the way, how people took it overseas, because I don't

know if anyone knows what a crackerjack box is overseas, but in America it's

very common, a box of caramel popcorn, basically.

And they always have a little prize at the bottom, like a whistle. And I

thought that was a wonderful line, there ain't no coupe de ville hiding at the

bottom of a crackerjack box.

And I didn't think the Eagles would do that.

i can

She left me on a stormy night

or she kissed me

Well, it was very clear that these were Jim's songs. These were Jim's babies, so

to speak. You know, I always thought that this was all fueled by a lot of

angst, you know. And Meat Loaf certainly gave voice to that emotional feeling.

And you could see it. They worked very well together in terms of, you know, Jim

being able to write for Meat Loaf and Meat Loaf being able to put the emotion.

and the force, the true unbelievable force, into Steinman's songs.

I never thought of them as personal songs in terms of my own life, but they

were definitely personally obsessive songs.

They were all about my obsessions and images.

I mean, none of them takes place in a normal world for me.

I mean, they all take place in very extreme worlds, very operatic again.

I mean, the key word is really heightened. They're all heightened. They

don't take place in normal reality.

has this prepubescent, you know, sexual mentality that kids, you know, sort of

really could understand and they wanted to be part of. Maybe it was sort of like

when I was a kid, there was a record, Louie Louie, and everybody, I remember

standing up on a stool with my ear to the speaker because I wanted to hear

what those words were, you know, and I think there's this great, you know, this

great sexual undertone that kids liked a lot.

You can't imagine Steinman having these experiences if you've known Steinman. So

Meatloaf became the... It was almost like Cyrano de Bergerac.

Steinman is Cyrano, and Meatloaf is the bumpkin who's singing

Cyrano's words.

So I can imagine Steinman being in a car by the lake with the most beautiful girl

in school.

I can imagine him imagining it, but that's about it.

Ain't no doubt about it, we were doubly blessed.

Because we were barely 17 and we were barely dressed.

I had gone out with a girl in Dallas named Renee Allen and had this great

car, had a 63 red convertible.

with a great dashboard and and uh i told him about that and this and that girl

would always that girl would always get to the point of of really heavy petting

and always go stop right there stop you know and it drove me nuts and i'm still

crazy from it you know i'll probably never recover from that girl saying that

to me all that time and um and that that was the i mean that was the catalyst for

him to write paradise just like i want to write the ultimate car song crash

song, I wanted to write sort of the ultimate car sex song, because those are

two important mythic icons of rock and roll.

And so I thought I'd really take car sex to its ultimate extreme, to where it

ruins lives.

I said, so in Paradise, what goes on here? You know, slightly skeptical.

And I said to Jim, you know, since you are the creator, what do I, you know,

what do you want going on here? And he said, you'll know when you get out

there. And that's the same thing Meat said. You'll know when you get out

there. So basically, it sort of just found itself.

I mean, Carla had one of the most difficult jobs in the world. Every night

she had to do Paradise by the Dashboard Light with Meatloaf, which is not an

easy job.

And I remember her saying, I cannot believe how far down my throat he's

getting his tongue.

It doesn't seem possible, but it's like he's doing a stomach x-ray with his

tongue. And I said, yes, I sympathize.

The tongue in the mouth was not part of the job description.

And the nice thing is we never did dates, so it was strictly theatrical.

Did the album and at the same time when I did the album I was going back and

forth from Los Angeles You know, I had a television show and then I was on

Broadway and because because of this album I was offered my own record deal

and I just I didn't go on tour to be perfectly honest Carla was better on

stage than Ellen and that's not taken away from Ellen at all At that moment in

time, that was the reality of it.

I've got to know right now Before we go any further Do you love me? Will you

love me forever? Do you need me?

Will you never leave me? Will you make me so happy for the rest of my life?

Will you take me away?

Will you make me your wife? Do you love me?

Will you love me forever? Do you need me?

Will you never leave me? Will you make me so happy?

I said to me, I go, mate, now, I'm not going to have to go in there and, like,

sing to Ellen's track, right? I mean, it's the video. It's a whole other

thing. Well, of course, I didn't understand that they would have had to,

you know, spend a fortune and taken the whole thing apart.

And he goes, no, of course you won't have to do that. You know, and I go

there, and I'm like, I'm singing to Ellen's track. And the thought was that

Carla was the visual on the tour, so she'd be on the...

But she's not singing on the video.

the most asked question i'm sure of her throughout her career and the same with

me it's like well here's the story you know ellen sang on the album she never

performed live with him i performed live i'm on the video that's the deal but you

know all things all things soften with time and i think most people even even

even with the video know that it was me who sang the record most people care

it's like millions of people occupied did you know uh So it's okay.

What's it gonna be boy?

Come on.

I can wait all night.

What's it gonna be boy? Yes or no?

What's it gonna be boy?

Yes or no?

The thing I'm proudest about the record is I think it's an incredibly funny and

a very ecstatic record at the same time, to me.

It's very gothic, very powerful, majestic.

And at times, I think, for me, still spine-tingling. But it's very funny. I

mean, I don't think it's ever not funny. You know, it's sort of Disney, Disney

-esque, only with an R rating.

One of the things that always made the meatloaf thing fly for me was that there

was a sense of humor about it.

I'm not actually exactly sure how you could take the music seriously

otherwise, but lyric elements like this are what made it amusing, helped me get

through kind of the more drudgerous parts of the production, realizing we'd

be bringing these jokes to people.

I think Bad Outta Hell is more real than 95

% of the records ever made.

It made a commitment to something. It wasn't like a rehash of somebody else's

junk. You know, when you hear so much music, it sounds very dieted in its own

way. It was really true to itself.

There are just some things that touch an emotional core.

that I think people are going to want to listen to for a long time. I think this

record is one of them.

Like some of the great American Broadway musicals, they last forever, and I think

Bad Outta Hell will probably last forever.

I think it's a heroic record, ultimately, you know, in content and in

execution. There's a sense of heroism, which you definitely don't find in most

pop music, which tends to be domestic.

And I'm glad so many people have bought it and so many people have liked it.

because that album has been a fight my whole life.

That's all I really need to make me stay.

Just like a child again, heaven can wait.

And all I've got is time until the end of time.

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